St. Clare is the little plant of St. Francis, as she called herself. A blog to my call to become a Poor Clare Colettine. If St. Clare was a "little plant", I am a scraggly weed.

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Friday, July 6, 2012

Writings of St. Clare - 3rd Letter to Bl. Agnes of Prague

The third letter to Blessed Agnes of Prague

To
Agnes, most venerable lady and sister in Christ, deserving of love
before all other mortals, blood-sister of the illustrious king of
Bohemia, but now sister and spouse of the most high King of the heavens,
Clare, most humble and unworthy handmaid of Christ and servant of the
Poor Ladies, sends her prayer for the joys of salvation in him who is
the Author of Salvation and for everything better that can be desired.

I am filled with such great joy about your well-being, your
happiness, and your favourable successes through which, I understand,
you are thriving on the journey you have begun to obtain the reward of
heaven; and I breathe again in the Lord with elation equal to my
knowledge and belief that you are supplying in wonderful ways what is
lacking both in me and in the other sisters who are following in the
footsteps of the poor and humble Jesus Christ.

I am indeed able to rejoice, and there is no one who could
separate me from such great joy, since I already possess what under
heaven I have yearned for, and I see that you, supported by some kind of
wonderful claim on the wisdom that comes from God's own mouth, are
formidably and extraordinarily undermining the stratagems of the cunning
enemy, the pride that destroys human nature, and the vanity that
beguiles human hearts.

I see, too, that you are embracing with humility, the virtue of
faith, and the arms of poverty the incomparable treasure that lies
hidden in the field of the world and the hearts of human beings, where
it is purchased by the One by whom all things were made from nothing.
And, to use as my own the words of the apostle himself, I consider you
someone who is God's own helper and who supports the drooping limbs of
his ineffable body. Who, then, would tell me not to rejoice about such
great and marvellous joys? That is why you, too, dearest, must always
rejoice in the Lord, and not let bitterness and confusion envelop you, O
Lady most beloved in Christ, joy of the angels, and crown of your
sisters.

Place your mind in the mirror of eternity;

Place your soul in the splendour of glory;

Place your heart in the figure of the divine substance;

And, through contemplation, transform your entire being into the image of the Divine One himself,

So that you, yourself, may also experience what his friends
experience when they taste the hidden sweetness that God alone has kept
from the beginning

For those who love him.

And completely ignoring all those who in this deceitful and
turbulent world ensnare their blind lovers, you might totally love him
who gave himself totally out of love for you, whose beauty the sun and
moon admire, and whose rewards, in both their preciousness and
magnitude, are without end. I am speaking about the Son of the Most
High, to whom the Virgin gave birth and, after whose birth, she remained
a virgin. May you cling to his most sweet Mother, who gave birth to
the kind of Son whom the heavens could not contain, and yet, she carried
him in the tiny enclosure of her sacred womb, and held him on her young
girl's lap.

Who would not abhor the treachery of the enemy of humanity who, by
means of the pride that results from fleeting and false glories,
compels that which is greater than heaven to return to nothingness? See,
it is already clear that the soul of a faithful person, the most worthy
of God's creations through the grace of God, is greater than heaven,
since the heavens and the rest of creation together cannot contain their
Creator and only the soul of a faithful person is his dwelling place
and throne and this is possible only through the charity that the wicked
lack. For the Truth says: The one who loves me, will be loved by my
Father, and I shall love him and we shall come to him and make our
dwelling place with him.

So, just as the glorious Virgin of virgins carried him physically,
so, you too, following in her footsteps especially those of humility
and poverty, can without any doubt, always carry him spiritually in your
chaste and virginal body, containing him by whom both you and all
things are contained, and possessing that which, even when compared with
the other transitory possessions of this world, you will possess more
securely. Regarding this, some kings and queens of this world are
deceived; even though in their pride they have climbed all the way up
to the sky, and their heads have touched the clouds, in the end they are
destroyed like a pile of dung.

Now, I thought that I should respond to your charity about the
things that you have asked me to clarify for you; namely, what were the
feasts-and I imagine, that you have perhaps figured this out to some
extent-that our most glorious father, Saint Francis, urged us to
celebrate in a special way with different kinds of foods. Indeed, your
prudence knows that, with the exception of the weak and the sick, for
whom he advised and authorized to use every possible discretion with
respect to any foods whatsoever, none of us who are healthy and strong
ought to eat anything other than Lenten fare, on both ordinary days and
feast days, fasting every day except on Sundays and on the Lord's
Nativity, when we ought to eat twice a day. And, on Thursdays in
Ordinary Time, fasting should reflect the personal decision of each
sister, so that whoever might not wish to fast would not be obligated to
do so. All the same, those of us who are healthy fast every day except
Sundays and Christmas. Certainly, during the entire Easter week, as
Blessed Francis states in what he has written, and on the feasts of holy
Mary and the holy apostles, we are also not obliged to fast, unless
these feasts should fall on a Friday; and, as has already been said, we
who are healthy and strong always eat Lenten fare. But because neither
is our flesh the flesh of bronze, nor our strength the strength of
stone, but instead, we are frail and prone to every bodily weakness, I
am asking and begging in the Lord that you be restrained wisely, dearest
one, and discreetly from the indiscreet and impossibly severe fasting
that I know you have imposed upon yourself, so that living, you might
profess the Lord, and might return to the Lord your reasonable worship
and your sacrifice always seasoned with salt.

Stay well, always in the Lord, just as I very much desire to stay
well, and be sure to remember both me and my sisters in your holy
prayers.